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<H1><A NAME="answer">
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<font color="#B03060">The Answer Gang</font>
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<H4>By Jim Dennis, Ben Okopnik, Dan Wilder, Breen, Chris, and...
(<a href="tag/bios.html">meet the Gang</a>) ...
the Editors of Linux Gazette...
and You!
<br>Send questions (or interesting answers) to
The Answer Gang
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<H3 align="left"><img src="../../gx/dennis/qbubble.gif"
height="50" width="60" alt="(?) " border="0"
>Newbie seeking advice</H3>
<p><strong>From David Bruce
</strong></p>
<p align="right"><strong>Answered By Jay R. Ashworth, Robos, Heather Stern
</strong></p>
<P><STRONG><FONT COLOR="#000066"><EM><IMG SRC="../../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" ALT="(?)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
>
I have an old IBM Aptiva (1996) with 30 MB of memory. I have
plenty of disk space (2 hard drives with 3 partitions, 1.2 GB, 2
GB, 1 GB)
</EM></FONT></STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG><FONT COLOR="#000066"><EM>
I would like some advice on the best distribution to use, and the
windows manager which will run efficiently with my current low
amount of memory.
</EM></FONT></STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG><FONT COLOR="#000066"><EM>
I am not much good with hardware, and want the install to be as
automated as possible.
</EM></FONT></STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG><FONT COLOR="#000066"><EM>
I want a simple home user computer setup.
</EM></FONT></STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG><FONT COLOR="#000099"><EM>
<BR>&gt;While Linux is fairly adept at running in low-resource environments,
<BR>&gt;they are not always by any means the most comfortable environments
<BR>&gt;in which to work. If you really don't want things to be complicated
<BR>&gt;and require work and thought, you should consider getting something
<BR>&gt;more current. Computers got <EM>REALLY</EM> cheap last year -- a decent
<BR>&gt;machine can be had -- new -- for under $400, if you shop really
<BR>&gt;carefully.
</EM></FONT></STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG><FONT COLOR="#000066"><EM>
So you think I should get rid of my 486-33 sx laptop I'm writing
this mail on and get some newer hardware? I don't think so! In my...
</EM></FONT></STRONG></P>
<blockQuote>
<IMG SRC="../../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Jay]
Well, no, that's not what I said at all, now, is it?
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
And you are obviously <EM>not</EM> an unskilled user looking for a home
machine, so you're willing to put whatever time and extra effort might
be necessary into the job of running Linux (and X) on a low resource
machine.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
Defenestration is my guess...
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
<IMG SRC="../../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Heather]
Buzzword Bingo: "defenestration" means being thrown out of windows.
(Or maybe an opening, like in all those old movies where someone is
tossed out of the saloon bodily.) So perhaps meta-defenestration should
mean throwing Windows(tm) out a window.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
<IMG SRC="../../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Robos]
Hiya again.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
Well, I just wanted to make a point that it's perfectly possible to
use even old hardware. And you don't have to be a nasa-scientist to
install linux even on those machines.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
BTW, whats that machine exactly? Something in the range of pentium
133-233 I guess? I also have one machine like that at my parents
place, running even enlightenment (not extremly fast, but workable).
And something like windowmaker or icewm will run even fast on those
machines. And the installation: Dunno about the likes of redhat and
suse if they can apply their framebuffer thingy, so with debian he is
on the safe side (a nice way of saying their installer design sucks
<IMG SRC="../../gx/dennis/smily.gif" ALT=";-)"
height="24" width="20" align="middle">. OK, it is harder than suse or redhat, but he already knows TAG
and if he takes a look at debianhelp.org (where I also hang around
some times) he will do just fine. Do you also know such things as
"OSIPs"? It's Open Source Install Party and we do it regularly at my
university for the freshmen. But also non-students are welcome. Where
was the original querent from and does such things exist in his area
too?
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
<IMG SRC="../../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Heather]
In my region we call it an Installfest. The BSD folk call theirs
Install-a-thons.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
My own recipe for running GUI mode on a low resource machine:
</blockQuote>
<UL>
<li> Use as wimpy a window manager as you can get away with. Fvwm's good.
<br>
Icewm's good. Enlightenment would depend on a theme with not too
many total bits in it to eat memory, but could do okay, even on a
486. Blackbox is good. K desktop is right out, Gnome too; there's
too many moving parts loaded in the desktops.
<br>
<li> Avoid running ANY servers you don't need to. 2 gettys are plenty.
<br>
inetd can go. cron and atd can go if you don't use them. Ditch lpd
until you plan to do a bunch of printing.
<br>
<li> Have good swap space.
<li> Use a solid-color background instead of a pixmap, even a tiled one.
<li> Build a perfectly tuned kernel for your hardware. Modules, no bloat.
<li> No desktop toys like cpu meters, xmas snow, screensavers.
<li> Avoid framebuffer, it's heavy on real CPU usage.
<li> In a worst case, less colors = less memory spent on screen efforts.
<br>
</UL><blockQuote>
<A HREF="http://www.libranet.com/">LibraNet</A>'s a good <A HREF="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</A> variety, among rpm matters I favor <A HREF="http://www.suse.com/">SuSE</A> as it
lets me be picky fairly safely, and both updaters are well behaved. SuSE
has a text mode available if the GUI doesn't work out. Libranet is a full
screen but text mode installer.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
If it makes you feel better I had a perfectly happy install of Redhat 3.03
with GUI and all, on a Pentium-60 with not an incredible boatload of RAM
amd about 500 Mb of hard disk. X has gotten bigger, but with X 4 it has
also gotten modular amd that may improve things too. But there are always
floppy-based dustros that speak X - they can't assume they're going to be
running on the hot multimedia monster, so they cut all the corners to fit,
just like you need.
</blockQuote>
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<H5 align="center">This page edited and maintained by the Editors
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<a href=""
>Copyright &copy;</a> 2002
<BR>Published in issue 77 of <I>Linux Gazette</I> April 2002</H5>
<H6 ALIGN="center">HTML script maintained by
<A HREF="mailto:star@starshine.org">Heather Stern</a> of
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